Avaya Goes "Hands-Free" for vSwitch Network Services Configuration With Wind River

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 10, 2014) -

• Brings greater simplicity to the data center and delivers on the promise of SDN, today.
• New technology to be submitted to open source community.
• New capability is planned for Avaya Fabric Connect, which continues to be the only technology in the market that can deliver a unified end-to-end virtualized network.

Avaya is collaborating with Wind River to take a significant step toward data center simplification through the development of "hands-free" vSwitch network services configuration. This capability, which the companies expect to submit to the Open Source domain, can deliver fault-free, end-to-end automation today as the foundation for software-defined networking (SDN) in the future. Avaya also plans to build this capability into its Fabric Connect technology, which delivers the only unified end-to-end virtualized network capability in the market today. 

The ability to eliminate manual administration and configuration of network switches means companies can quickly provision new services and greatly reduce the potential for costly errors and delays. Today, when a physical or virtual switch comes online, IT staff must manually type command lines to configure the new network nodes.

Now, through the joint effort with Wind River, automatic service configuration code is embedded into Open Virtual Switches. After a vSwitch is activated, the code automatically configures it into a unique network-wide service, completely removing manual provisioning from everyday service delivery. By way of comparison using physical switch configuration as a proxy, a study completed by Miercom¹ in 2011 found that a large data center with 800 top of rack switches could save nearly 12,000 hours of configuration time annually.

Earlier this year, Avaya introduced this capability in Fabric Connect, the company's network-wide virtualization technology. A finalist for Best of Interop 2014, Fabric Connect automatically configures services for users and devices that plug into or log on to the network.

Avaya and Wind River plan to submit this innovation to the openvswitch.org initiative. Avaya recently demonstrated this solution at VMworld 2014 and has already introduced the auto-attach technology to the IETF for consideration as a standard. 

Quotes
"What I hear from customers is that they are eagerly pursuing the promises of SDN. Here is a chance to offer immediate and tangible value to customers with virtualized data centers."
Marc Randall, vice president and general manager, Networking, Avaya

"To truly see SDN making a difference to our customers and the wider marketplace, we need to innovate and deliver solutions that are proven and address the real challenges preventing the acceleration of SDN for the data center. The contributions we are making today with our partner Avaya are helping to bring this vision closer to reality."
Ricky Watts, general manager, Switching Solutions, Wind River

"The Avaya-Wind River announcement furthers Avaya's SDN vision that started with Fabric Connect for network-wide virtualization and is now connecting to the virtualized compute area of data centers. In a time of increasing complexity, virtualized data centers are craving this kind of time-saving simplification."
Dave Michels, principal analyst, Talking Pointz

Tags: Avaya, Avaya VENA Fabric Connect, Avaya VENA Fabric Attach, Interop, Shortest Path Bridging, SPB, IEEE 802.1aq, Networking, Virtualization, Fabric Networking.

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these are reasonable, such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

¹ http://www.avaya.com/usa/resource/assets/premiumcontent/miercomreportethernetfabric.pdf

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